Configuring the Managed Metadata Service Application in SharePoint 2010-Part 1

The Managed metadata service application is a welcome addition to SharePoint 2010 and is one of my favorite Enterprise Content Management features within this release. In this three part series I plan to delve into the configuration of the Metadata Service Application and then finish off with real life examples on utilizing our metadata throughout our SharePoint sites. So what is the Managed Metadata Service Application all about and what value does it bring over what we had in SharePoint 2007?

The Managed Metadata’s primary purpose is to provide you with a central location to store metadata (commonly defined as data about data) that can be utilised throughout any site within your SharePoint farm. This is definitely one step ahead of what we referred to as Content Types and Site Columns in SharePoint 2007 where it was cumbersome to deploy to more than one site collection. I touched upon the Managed Metadata Service Application in my article in Configuring the User Profile Service in SharePoint 2010 as this was a prerequisite for the User Profile Service Application.

Primer on the Managed Metadata Service in SharePoint 2010

Managed Metadata and the word Taxonomy go hand in hand, and as mentioned previously, the Managed metadata service application allows us to formalize our Taxonomy or metadata which will be utilized across the entire farm.

There are a number of concepts that you will need to familiarize yourself with before we embark on the configuration.

Term Store This is the database in which our managed metadata is stored in.

Term is a word or a phrase that can be associated with an item in SharePoint Server 2010.

Term setis a collection of related terms.

There are two types of Terms available within SharePoint 2010. These are “Managed Terms” and “Enterprise Keywords”.

“Managed terms, commonly referred to as “Taxonomy” are predefined words or phrases that can only be created by users with the appropriate permissions. We can refer to this special group of users as “Metadata Content Managers”.

“Enterprise keywords, commonly referred to as “Folksonomy” are words or phrases that have been added by the end user.

Now that we have a better understanding on some of the key concepts, let’s deep dive into our setup and configuration of the Managed Metadata Service Application.

Now that we have successfully setup our Managed Metadata Service, let’s venture into the Term Store Management Tool. You can do so by navigating to Central Administration / Manage Service Applications and clicking on the newly created Managed Metadata Service.

Note, You can achieve the same by highlighting the service application and clicking on the Manage icon located in the ribbon.

This will launch the below screen which is referred to as the Term Store Management Tool.

Let’s quickly highlight what is made available on this screen.

Available Service Applications: If the farm has been setup with multiple Managed Metadata service applications you can easily navigate and configure each one from the single interface.

Sample Import: Here, Microsoft is providing your designated Metadata Managers with a template import file. This template can be used as a base of creating your own which can then be later imported.

Term Store Administrators: This is where you would add the designated users which will provide them with the ability to create new term set groups. By doing so, they will in turn be able to provide the necessary permissions to the group manager role. Note, users added here have full control of the specified term store. In the above screen capture, I have gone ahead and added Administrator and myself as Term Store Administrators.

Default Language: This one is self explanatory

Working Languages: In addition to the Default Language, you can also specify additional languages available for translation purposes.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for my next article in which I will venture into creating Groups, Term Sets and Terms and demonstrate how we can utilize our managed metadata within our SharePoint sites.